Why would you want to edit a received email?The two reasons I can think of are:

You may want to add some extra information or notes to the email

You may want to add a Project Number, Code or Name so that the email is easy to find later using Search tools.

How To Edit Received Emails in Outlook

Open Outlook

Double-click the email to open in a new window.

In Outlook 2013/2010, Select Actions > Edit Message from the Move section on the ribbon.
In Outlook 2007, Select Other Actions > Edit Message from the toolbar.
In Outlook 2003 and earlier, Select Edit > Edit Message from the menu.

Make the changes to the Body and Subject of the email

Press CTRL+S on the keyboard to save the changes to the email.

Why you may not want to edit received emails?
While editing emails is easy, it may be best to leave emails as you received them for the following reasons:

You may need the email in its original form for legal reasons. Editing emails is destructive in that the original email is not recoverable without manual editing.

You may accidentally forward or reply to an email and send your own confidential notes to someone else.

As an alternative, if you need to keep notes with your emails, you may want to look at Email Notes for Outlook. Email Notes lets you add notes to the emails without destroying the original email plus your notes stay confidential but you can still share them with other people when you CHOOSE to.

Reader Question: Outlook includes my email address in the To field when I do a Reply-All. Clearly I do not want to email myself but Outlook lacks the intelligence to not add my email address to the email. Do you have a solution?

YES. This functionality is built into Send Guard for Outlook. You can turn it on from the settings screen using the following steps:

SendGuard has a number of special filters that check outgoing emails to ensure that they are going to the correct people with all the required information. It’s built in tools include the Attachment Guard, Subject Guard, Reply (and Reply All) Guard, Account Guard, Bad Mood Guard and Send Confirm.

The first and obvious reason is because the deleted items folder is your virtual RUBBISH BIN.

Although it may be referred to as a folder in Outlook, it’s purpose is not for filing/storing emails which you might want to refer to later.

We do not store anything in the rubbish bin in the real world to grab it out later right… then why do it in the virtual world.

Here’s why you should NOT file emails to the Deleted Items folder?

Like its physical world counterpart (rubbish bin), the Deleted Items folder can be emptied very easily (right-click and then click Empty) causing permanent loss of your filed emails.

If your Outlook data file ever gets corrupted due to file size etc. automated recovery programs may try and empty out your Deleted Items folder which could result in the loss of your data.

IT Support people helping you with speed problems etc in Outlook may empty your Deleted Items folder before optimizing your file.

If you’re not going to refer to the email again and do not need to keep it (for legal reasons etc) then DELETE IT! Otherwise you need to FILE IT somewhere aside from Outlook’s Deleted Items folder (aka Outlook’s Garbage Bin).

Here are three better alternatives then filing to the Deleted Items folder:

For those who like to keep their filing simple, have one folder in which you file all your emails. (Give this folder a generic name like Filing or Old Emails or Archive) and drag emails to this folder for filing..or

For a more organized system, have different folders dedicated to projects, cases, clients, topics etc and then file the email into the relevant folder. You could use a addin like QuickFile for Outlook to file your emails quickly into dedicated folders.

Tagging your emails with keywords and using search (Gmail Style) is becoming the modern way of email organizing which has the benefits of both options mentioned above. You can keep all your emails in a single folder but tag it with multiple keywords like project name, client name etc. This keeps you’re your Outlook lean and clean. You can try EmailTags for Outlook if this method suits your style of email organization.

Use whatever method works for you but DO NOT USE DELETED ITEMS as a filing cabinet.

If you’re new to the idea of filing emails, I would also recommend that you download our free ebook 8 Simple Tips for Email Management in Outlook.

If you know of others who use their Deleted Items folder as a filing cabinet, feel free to share this post with them.

Have you ever BCCed someone on an email so that you can secretly keep them in the loop without the other recipients knowing? Here’s why it is a dangerous practice and what you should do instead.

What is BCC (for those who haven’t used it before)

When you send out an email you can add recipients email addresses to the To, CC or BCC fields. CC stands for carbon copy and is a term that comes from when we used typewriters and used carbon paper to make copies of letters to send to extra people.

BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy.

Normally when you send an email, recipients can see who else received the email because they can see the To and CC fields. But they cannot see the BCC field which means that if you BCC someone on an email, the other people who received the same email will not know.

Why might you use BCC?

To send a copy of the email to yourself so that you get it in your Inbox as an action item.

To send a copy to your Gmail account etc. for archiving.

To secretly inform someone about an email conversation

What is the danger of using BCC?

If you used BCC to keep a recipient hidden from others, imagine what would happen if the hidden recipient did a reply-to-all!

Suddenly the other recipients would be aware that you had been using BCC and depending on the nature of the email conversation, this may be viewed as dishonest or sneaky.

What you can do instead of using BCC

Instead of using BCC, I recommend that you send the email out to the main recipients only using the To and CC fields. Then FORWARD the sent email to anyone else who you need to inform.

Now even if the secret recipient does a Reply-to-All, it only comes back to you.

How to avoid accidental Reply-to-Alls yourself

If you or others in your organization are dealing with confidential information that you are BCCed on, you might want to also look at Send Guard for Outlook. to avoid doing an accident Reply-to-all yourself!

Send Guard has special filters that check emails as you respond to them and as they are sent out.

A special prompt will warn you and ask for confirmation if you reply to an email on which you have been BCCed.

This can avoid the accidental disclosure to other recipients that we referred to earlier.

How do you ensure confidential information is not accidently disclosed?

The Super 15 Rugby Season is starting this weekend. Make sure that you’re ready for all the games by downloading the fixtures inside your Outlook. The games “should” show at the correct time in your timezone but you may want to check in case of daylight saving changes etc.
Here’s what you need to do:

1. Make sure that your computer is setup to the correct time zone. This step is important to ensure that the game time gets shown at the correct time depending on where in the world you are. Go to the Windows Control Panel and open Date and Time.

(Your screen may be slightly different depending on the version of Outlook… it may have a separate tab for Time Zone).

Make sure that the correct Time Zone is displayed i.e. the time zone of where YOU are. (I am in Fiji so the screen shot above says Fiji). Click on Change time zone if you need to.

3. Import the downloaded file into your Outlook by using the following steps. If you are using Microsoft Outlook 2010, click File – Open – Import. For all other versions of Outlook, click File – Import & Export.

4. Select Import an iCalendar (ics) or vCalendar file (vcs) from the list and click Next.

5. Use the screen that comes up to select the ics file that was downloaded in Step 1.

(You may get the following extra steps depending on the version of Outlook you are using)

Click either Open as New or Import. (I simply imported it to my main Outlook Calendar as it then synched with my Iphone too)

One of the nice new things in Outlook 2013 is that you can get a weather forecast for the next few days directly in your Calendar. In this post we discuss how you can customise this to display temperature in Celsius (it defaults to Fahrenheit) and to add more locations.

Displaying the Temperature in Celsius

By default the temperature is displayed in Fahrenheit. If you’ve grown up with the Celsius system, you’ll probably want to change this.

Click File-Options

Click on Calendar

Scroll down to Weather

Make sure that Show Weather on the calendar is ticked and click on Celsius.

Click OK.

Adding locations so that you can know the temperature in more than one place

This is really useful if you spend your time traveling between a few main locations… or if you want to know what the weather is like to a soon-to-be-visited holiday location.

Go to your Calendar.

Click on the drop-down arrow next to the name of the city where the weather is displayed (In the image above, you can see my home town Suva is shown)

Click Add Location (from the list of options in the drop down).

Enter the name of the city town followed by a comma and the name of the country (e.g. Auckland, New Zealand) and press Enter (or click on the magnifying glass)

Select the name of the city from the Search results.

The new city will be added to the list and its weather forecast for the next few days displayed.

You can change between your list of cities by using the drop down arrow.

This may not be the most useful new feature in Outlook 2013 but it is nice… try it out and let us know what you think by leaving a comment on the blog.